Ghost task force, stimulus; real floods, bottleneck

You can call Assemblyman Jim Tedisco a grandstander, but there's a time and a place for it, and when he's right, he's right. With rain pouring down as I write and more rivers overflowing, it would indeed be a good idea to investigate why a flood control task force created five years ago never held a single meeting. Legislative hearings are not always useless, and it would be instructive to dig up some bureaucrats and politicians to testify about this under oath.

With President Obama scheduled to release another jobs plan tomorrow, legislators also could try to find out why the state's 2009 rail stimulus money from the federal government remains largely unspent, including funds for a second track between Albany and Schenectady to relieve a longstanding bottleneck. There isn't even a plan to spend the money on building the track, just endlessly unresolved disputes among the state DOT and the railroads. Apparently the New York State High Speed Rail Planning Board is another ghost commission, having been created last year (update: or the year before) but never convened.

 

Comments

[Bob Conner]

(This comment was in response to this now deleted one: "It's all part of the D&F of WC." -- which was a reference to the decline and fall of Western civilization. I deleted it at my friend's request for technical reasons, i.e. the way she had posted it included a link she didn't want. -- BC)
Hey, I assume this is JT, and this time I can't argue with you. I'm not a Tea Party Republican opposed on principle to fiscal stimulus or tax increases on the rich or spending money on rail. But what we have here is government simply failing to function -- and clear indications that Gov. Cuomo has a long way to go before he can say he's fixed the notorious dysfunction of NYS gov't.